Kelderek

I did a mission a little while ago where my return vehicle re-entered Kerbin's atmosphere going more than 20km/s. I thought that was pretty cool and it made me wonder: what is the highest velocity you've had upon re-entering Kerbin's atmosphere? This might make for an interesting challenge for the challenge forum, kind of like the opposite of the Stock Kebin Escape speed record challenge. It's one thing to leave Kerbin's SOI at a high speed, but returning really fast would probably require the use of gravity assists. It would get even more interesting with the addition of re-entry heat changes in 1.0 as it might become possible that a high enough speed would not be able to aerobrake into orbit without disintegrating. What are your top re-entry speeds?

The tolerance just needs to be tweaked. The tier 3 launch pad supposedly has no limit on the mass of your craft, but there needs to be some wiggle room to allow for the craft to settle when the physics kick in on ship load. Like figure out what the most mass you could possibly throw together in the VAB and then apply a gravity drop of a certain distance and make sure the launch pad can handle that (something like 15,000t dropped 20m, give or take). The launch pad should only blow up if a really massive ship falls from a significant height (50m+) - something far higher than the amount that a ship settles on load. Otherwise it should hold strong and firm. The other buildings and things near the launch pad can have lower tolerances for being destroyed, but the pad surface itself should be exceedingly strong if you have it fully upgraded. If I want to design a 10,000t launch vehicle, then I should be able to load it on the pad without destroying both.

You can restrict the flow of electric charge on your vessel using the same method that you would use for a fuel tank. This can be useful if you want to store up some emergency charge for later. Just disable the flow on a battery and no electric charge will be able to enter or leave that battery until you change it again. You can even design your ships to have a single, small 100 charge battery that you only use in an emergency. This is especially useful if your electric charge sources are right on the border line for satisfying your ships needs and passing through the dark side of a planet or moon might drain your charge. Another example is when you time warp at high speed while leaving SAS on. If you always over-build your ships with excess batteries or power sources, then this is less useful, but for those who try to minimize and go with the lowest part counts then this might be more helpful.

The name is probably not original, but I call this the "Mk2 Dromedary". It may not be visible in the pictures, but I have clipped the LV-N engine inside the mk2-1.25m adapter in the back of the fuselage, but since this is just for appearance, I removed all the fuel from that tank so it becomes just a structural piece. I designed this ship to help me learn to get better at flying and landing spaceplanes -- something which I am only now getting the hang of. So this has an excess of lifting surfaces and air intakes making it glide very well. It was easy to make it into an SSTO too, capable of delivering small payloads to orbit. EDIT: here's the craft file

I've tried alt, shift, to no avail. I suspect that the intakes on the front of my fuel tanks are responsible since I used radial symmetry to add a block of 4 of them to a quad-coupler. Even so, the game should just default to radial in that situation, but still allow me to change it if I want. In any design it seems highly likely that you would want to have mixture of both symmetry types, so locking in only one mode doesn't make sense.

I guess I don't understand why the game would start forcing one mode over another at all. I would expect you to be able to try radial or mirror mode anywhere. I don't really know much about the game engine or how the parts are represented in the game code, but this is just really frustrating -- especially if you use one mode repeatedly and all of a sudden the game starts to force a different one. Using one mode of symmetry should not lock in that mode for every other part that you add -- it might default to doing that, but don't force it.

I guess it won't hurt to close the intakes high up, so I'll keep them as part of my action groups. Thanks all.

You might want to wait and see if Laie cares before you do it all over again. I only mentioned it because I wasn't able to do any useful staging for my Kerbin launch because of the circle restriction. I had this huge bundle of fuel tanks that made it to orbit with the brute force of a long burn time. It did save me a few parts for decouplers and sepratrons, but I would not have built it that way if it wasn't for that rule. The all-in-one launch is a lot harder to do if you are restricted in size.

I can understand closing an air intake at low altitude if you have lots of intakes and don't need the air yet, opening it higher up when the air is thinner. After you've reached a really high altitude and your jet engines start to flame out, is there any need to close the intakes then? I would assume that if the air is thin enough to not help your engines, then it would be thin enough to not cause any drag either. Is this true? Or is the drag somehow still magically strong enough that it would help to close my intakes at high altitude? Not a particularly big deal, but it would affect how I set up my action groups.

@Starlionblue: does that ship fit entirely inside the circle on the floor of the VAB? That looks really wide at the base. That's a loooooong trip to make out in the cold of space with no comfy command pod to stay in!

That's pretty cool, thanks for the pics. My lander wasn't quite as efficient, but it got the job done just fine. I never use the exterior command seats for anything but rovers, as personally it just doesn't suit my playstyle to use them for landers or orbiters. But I do like your design, especially that last pic - the look on Jeb's face is fitting

I am trying to add a part to a spaceplane wing using mirror symmetry, but the game is only allowing radial and it's driving me nuts. I am trying to attach a fuel duct to a jet fuel tank that is part of my wing, I need to start it there and bring it to the central fuselage (fuel flow direction is of utmost importance here). The fuel tank was placed on the wing using mirror symmetry, in fact the whole wing was made with mirror mode. But no matter what I do, the game will only allow for radial symmetry mode to attach a fuel duct to this tank. Is there some trick I am missing here to force the symmetry to change? Hitting "R" does nothing in this case, it just stays on radial mode. Here's what it looks like:

I have had this problem before. With 0.90 it's super easy to resolve this by using the rotate gizmo on your thrusters. Here's how I do it: * I avoid ever rotating the command pod (or probe core) inside the VAB -- I find it helpful to always have it properly aligned as it is when you first drop the part. Assume it is fixed and only move it up or down, but don't rotate it. * Sometimes if you have stuff sticking out all over in different directions or different angles, it can help to make a simple throw-away reference frame. I made one out of girders and placed it below the command pod. You can use this to help align things when making rotations. When you're done, you can just remove it. * Use the CoM indicator to place your thrusters, and then use your reference frame to rotate them the right way. EDIT: also note, that for this particular command pod the hatch is NOT related to the control axes at all. If you drop a fresh command pod in the VAB you will see the hatch is at an angle, but the pod itself is properly aligned - this is one reason why it is advisable to not rotate the command pod in the VAB at all, so you don't lose track of your axes of control.

If you click on my signature Eve Rocks image, it should take you right to my mission report with lots of details for how I did that mission. I'm only at about 22,000,000 funds in my career, but that is mostly just doing these trips to all of the bodies in the system. So you can see the net gain that I had after unlocking all my tech tree, as well as upgrading my facilities. My powered descent was all messed up and I was using about 1000m/s more DV than I should have as a result. I didn't have a ton of experience with powered descents, at least not ones on high gravity bodies. Here's a link for the thread where I asked for some help.

Ok, well I'll think about that some. To be honest this whole thing has left me a bit exhausted and drained, so if I do make a challenge it might not be until 1.0 hits. When I realized that I was only a few bodies short of visiting them all, I pretty much hunkered down and forced myself to finish those last few missions. Now that I've done that, I can spend some time goofing around with some wonky ship designs or maybe try practicing more spaceplane stuff (which I really suck at). I guess this makes sense. Flags on Kerbin are easy to do so it makes sense that the XP window would show orbit as the highest thing achieved. If you get to another body I can see how doing those things in reverse would lead to more XP, hence planting a flag somewhere else becomes the highest thing.

It just seemed to make the most sense to send all 3 of the orange-suits around places together in 0.90 since they are different classes. Certainly in the early part of the career it helps for leveling them up with XP. Though I have yet to find a use for the engineer, none of my missions have needed one yet, but I take Bill along just in case. Tylo was definitely a hard one at first, I had to learn some new tactics to get my landing right. I love how each body in the system poses a different challenge: some are hard to land on (Tylo), some are hard to get into orbit (Moho), some are hard to leave (Eve).

I thought about that for sure, but either way, I failed to have proper documentation for the way most challenges are run. If I started up a new challenge it would be customary for me to provide my own submission and all I could do is show this info as it's all I have since I didn't take many screenshots. I think it would make for a good challenge there though.

With some help from folks on the forum today I was able to land on Tylo and return back safely to Kerbin. This marks the end of a personal goal to take Jeb, Bob, and Bill to all of the planets and moons in the Kerbol system and bring them back home safe and sound. Some notes about the experience: * I am playing career mode with a custom variation of normal difficulty (checkboxes match moderate, but sliders match normal). * All three of these Kerbals: Jeb, Bob and Bill were together for each of these missions, and oftentimes I also had several others along too. None of these missions were done separately for the Kerbals, the three were always together. I did not even attempt a trip to the Mun or Minmus until I was capable of sending all 3 of these guys together. This was one of my main goals. * All of these planets and moons were reached on separate trips, so this wasn't a grand tour with a mothership or anything like that. This was done gradually. I wish I had taken more screenshots along the way, but this little mission of mine kind of developed over time so I didn't document it much. * Almost all of these planet and moon trips were combined with "build a surface outpost" contracts, the early missions are the main exception as I did not have the reputation for the good station contracts until I was further along. This provided the funds necessary (and lots extra too) and it added a nice bit of challenge too. * I'm not sure why Jool isn't counting as an orbit, I've orbited it countless times on this career, but it only shows "flight". I have also planted flags on Kerbin, but that isn't much of an achievement and you don't get any XP for that so it doesn't show. * My Eve Rocks challenge submission was a part of the overall work (see my signature). * I will admit to cheating on one very specific occasion. I sent 9 kerbals all the way to Moho for a surface station contract (my 3 orange-suits and a few trainees). This made for a VERY hard trip due to the massive amount of DV needed just to make orbit at Moho. But I planned it all out well, or so I thought, and landed on Moho, planted 9 flags (tedious), and then left for home. My fuel ran out with about 200 m/s DV remaining on my transfer burn back to Kerbin. I did not have a good quicksave spot that I could use to maybe attempt more efficient maneuvers, and I also forgot that I could probably get a few DV from my monopropellant. So I used hyperedit to add in a tiny amount of fuel and I continued on and flew out the rest of the mission. The way I see it, I sent a whopping NINE kerbals to Moho, I should be spotted the 200m/s DV for trying a harder mission. I also chose to fly the remaining part of the mission instead of just using hyperedit to send me home. Anyway, all the rest of my missions were done by the books, so I don't feel too bad. * Eve was the hardest body for me, followed by Moho and then Tylo. For Tylo, I had been doing my powered descents wrong and was able to correct that a bit with help today on the forum. Thanks! * Most of these were done without refueling, but I did need to do it a couple times. Having foreseen the need for extra fuel, I had setup a fuel station at Jool before I bothered with any of Jool's moons. * I have learned a TON doing all of these trips, but there's still a lot more left for me to learn and master. If I ever try for this again (probably in 1.0), then I will likely try to combine more of these trips together, like hitting Duna and Ike in one trip, or trying for a Jool-5 challenge.

I managed to finish my mission, you guys rock! Thanks again for the help. I had a funny almost-disaster on my way back home from Tylo. I had used one of my larger tugs as a transfer stage with the plan that I would refuel it at my Jool fuel station if necessary. This was a tug design I had made a while back, so it was not custom tailored for a trip to Tylo. As you can see from the second image, I just BARELY made it to the fuel station with about 62 liquid fuel remaining from tanks that once held over 14,000 liquid fuel. So next time, I should probably be a bit more careful with my planning. My Tylo lander worked great though, so thanks again for all the tips.

I found this method to be very useful, it worked for me to do it this way on my first try. I did simplify my lander to make it only 3 stages (1 for landing, 2 for ascent - mostly because I want my final vessel to be as small as possible once back in orbit). I started with 6448 m/s DV at 50km altitude, used roughly 3200 +/- 50m/s to land and it only took about 2600 gain a 50km orbit again. So I can refine the design some more to trim off the excess DV. I was definitely doing my descent burns wrong before. I don't think I understood the suicide burn part correctly, I would just burn retrograde all the way down adjusting my throttle here and there until I landed. After this discussion and all the mentions of "suicide burn" I took notice of the "suicide burn distance" and "suicide burn DV" values displayed in my KER vessel window. I think I understand this to mean that the distance ticks on down close to 0 at which point I would need to use the DV amount to stop in time without crashing. When I tried the method TheSaint mentioned, I killed my orbital speed down to about 150m/s at which point I noticed that my suicide burn was about 100m/s more than the remaining DV in my landing stage. I coasted until the suicide distance ticked down to about 100-200m and then burned full throttle, ditching the landing stage* and using about 100 or so m/s DV of my ascent stage to finish the landing (I turned on MechJeb for the final bit). This seemed to work well enough that I am probably almost ready to design the transfer stage and Kerbin launcher for this mission. Thank you all for the advice and assistance. EDIT: When I say ditching the landing stage, I only mean the tanks and engines that helped me land, I'm not quite dumb enough to get rid of my landing gear before landing

If I try to keep my TWR in roughly the same range, I lose about 300-500 m/s DV when I tried switching to aerospikes. That doesn't seem like it would help, as I have a good enough TWR already.

I'm trying to build a vessel to land on Tylo and return back to orbit. Thus far I am only working on the lander itself, so I am starting in Tylo orbit with a vessel capable of doing a de-orbit burn, landing on Tylo, ascending back up and orbiting again. I'll worry about a transfer stage and Kerbin launcher later. The DV map I am using says that I will need 3070 m/s for both landing an ascending, so my vessel currently has a bunch of stages totaling about 6500 m/s. So far though, my tests with hyperedit are showing that it will take a lot more DV to land than 3070 m/s and I am trying to figure out where I am going wrong. 1. What orbit would be considered "low orbit" for Tylo? The range for "in space near Tylo" extends to a whopping 250km according to the wiki, but since Tylo has no atmosphere any orbit that can clear the mountain peaks might be sufficient. 2. What orbit would you recommend I establish before attempting to land? How much of a difference will my orbit altitude make for the necessary landing DV at Tylo? Since Tylo has decent gravity I am expecting changes in orbit matter a lot. 3. It's possible that I am doing the powered landing wrong or poorly. I have to kill more than 2000m/s of orbit speed if I start at 50km altitude, so I just burn hard until I get down to about 200m/s and then I throttle it down so that I get to roughly 100m/s around 10km altitude and then let the throttle stay low but high enough to bleed off that speed as I descend, aiming for about 20m/s at 1km and <5m/s inside 100m. Using this method took me almost 4500m/s of DV to land from 50km so I'm sure this is all wrong, lol. Here's the VAB shot of my lander as it stands so far: I can use all the help I can get, thanks. EDIT: I also tried to use MechJeb for landing and that fails horribly. I'm guessing that it has a hard time with using staging during the landing as every time I try it, I crash hard into the ground at high speed.

I tried this with my Eve Rocks challenge all-in-one launch vehicle and managed to get a 6.2t payload (hitchiker can and other basic lander parts) up to 14216 m/s. I could have had this about 2km/s better if I was willing to use the transfers stage, but I was impatient and just staged the whole thing to save time (it would have burned for 17 minutes multiplied by about 7x due to lag). I only made a couple changes to the vessel to try this, mainly getting rid of my parachute + landing gear apparatus, but if I put more effort into it, trimming off parts from the Eve mission that are not needed as well as reducing the payload mass, I would probably do a lot better. So if you can build an all-in-one launcher for an Eve mission, then this should end up being similar.

I recommend you standardize the payload for this challenge. Like a certain mass or using a certain command module/part.

Huh? The explore contracts come nowhere close to the amount of funds you can get from surface and orbital station contracts. These range between 1.5M to 4.0M funds in my game (custom variation on normal difficulty). The "Explore" contracts seem to be tied to your reputation and perhaps also to what places you've already been to. I've found it possible to systematically go to every body in the Kerbol system one at a time and having the necessary explore mission for it as well as a lucrative surface station contract to pay all my travel expenses. I do agree though that science points need an overhaul.